The flipside of gaslighting.

Is that we have a culture built on fragility, where people constantly tip toe around the truth to not upset others / rock the boat.

Confrontation and conflict are avoided.

And then the line between someone who genuinely manipulates and gaslights others vs. those that are willing to speak exactly what they feel without concerns about the repercussions, becomes blurred.

The reality is, we are not always going to agree or see others perspectives. It’s not possible to always see things through another’s lense or understand their point of view (because we are all incredibly and beautifully complex human beings) - nor should we always be trying to do so.

Sometimes it will feel as though someone’s point of view is attempting to distort your own because it’s so vastly different to your own, and may even contradict your perspective of reality.

Coming out of a decade where I have struggled with boundaries and have found myself unable to always hold my own centre due to my depth of sensitivity and capacity to feel others experiences - I am finding myself more recently polarising into the opposite experience, as my boundaries strengthen.

I’ve had multiple experiences lately where I have found myself disinterested with others experiences, realising that I have actually concerned myself with others realities for far too long. Empathy has swung towards a radical choosing-of-myself and i’ve had very little bandwidth to listen to others experiences - or any desire to. I’ve played therapist to people for too long - often outside of my actual paid working hours.

I know my experience will most little settle back into and find a middle ground again - but I have definitely found myself in an uncomfortable experience lately, where I have recognised that others may in fact experience me as closed, cold and disinterested now that my boundaries have strengthened. And in fact I am a little closed, cold and disinterested in much of what previously interested me. I find myself sobered - less interested in drama - less interested in tensions which feel inconsequential and small - and the desire to close off to them. And at the same time I can feel how this would be perceived by others as gaslighting their own experience.

I have had partners before, who have held this pole and role in our relationship - and I have both appreciated them for this and have also demonised them for it.

And now, they are my teachers - I am recognising where they were often, simply, just being clean with their energy - and where I was trying to unconsciously manipulate them into my emotional experience when they were not available.

I then when I track back to my childhood, I think about how I learned emotional containment through my father who had little time for emotion. And how I actually value this as an alternative to those that just want to pour their emotion forth with little containment or respect for others personal space.

I am playing with this fine line.

I am trying to practise being more direct - and concerning myself less with how others perceive me in this but it is so incredibly challenging doing so, being surrounded by therapy culture / people who have learned to become more sensitive as a result of having their emotions and feelings shamed as children. Including myself.

Over the past couple of months, I have been firmer in my authority and in directing conversations - I have been more closed to supporting people outside of my “work” and have been treating my time off as… time off. Time to relax, to enjoy myself and to be more in lightness.

And it has been interesting to witness others reactions to me - and the loss of connection that has resulted in me being less willing to bend myself to playing any kind of role of unconscious therapist or healer. I have had to witness my own uncomfortably with power and directness - and with staying contained in the face of reaction.

Phew.

I expect this to be a bigger question for many people as we watch this transit of Neptune and Saturn into Aries from Pisces. Pisces archetypally being the Mother Theresa of the zodiac - empathetic, emotional, compassionate, blurring boundaries to expand the self vs Aries being the polar opposite - self contained, concerned about one’s own needs, boundaried, intellectual.